Woggles, tickets, and Coach's pretty necklace
As far as Boy Scouts are concerned, I'm pretty illiterate. As a girl in a family of girls, we had no brothers from whom we could learn all we needed to know about the Boy Scouts of America. My memories of Boy Scouts date back to when my dad was a Scoutmaster, and the scouts came to our house and made a tennis ball cannon and shot tennis balls three blocks over, after which they blew a hole in the back of our garage. I also accompanied my dad to the desert more than once for a scout campout. Bottle rockets, loud boys, and looong Courts of Honor featuring slide shows with an old school slide projector also come to my mind. So it comes as no surprise then, that before we left for a Court of Honor for Coach last night where he was receiving some Woodbadge beads, that I asked, "how did you earn these?" and "what exactly is Woodbadge?" Coach launched into a deep discussion of Lord Baden Powell, the military, and neckerchiefs. Before my eyes totally glazed over, I did get the basic premise for his award... Woodbadge is adult leadership scout training, and after you attend this training, in gratitude, you set some service-related goals (called your ticket) that you have to accomplish within 18 months, and when you do that, you earn a new neckerchief, a leather woggle, and some beads on a leather chain. I'm sorry to say I don't remember what the beads symbolize, (I'm sorry Coach) but they have something to do with Lord Baden Powell being given some beads from Africa. (And as a tribute to my lack of knowledge about anything Scout, I confess I had to look up Lord Baden Powell's name on Google to spell it correctly.) So in all seriousness, this was a nice award given to Coach, as not everyone who attends Woodbadge follow though with their goal setting and service. So, even though I didn't grasp everything that went into this and even though I like to say "woggle," I can't understand a lot of the lingo, I was still pretty proud of Coach. (As a sidenote, Coach said he would teach me how to make a woggle... and for all of you dying in suspense of what a woggle is, a woggle= the thingy that holds your neckerchief together in the front.) So, way to go Coach! You are great! 
The truly sad part of this whole spiel is that Baby Brother will someday be a Boy Scout. So I will apologize to you, Baby Brother, in advance. I will try not to confuse Webelos with Woggles and Bears with Beads. And inasmuch as I don't know what I'm talking about right now, I will try not to embarrass us both.
8 comments:
You know more than me and I have 3 brothers!
ummmm....what? i only have girls. we don't speak that language here.
i must confess. when i first saw the title i couldnt figure out what chads pretty necklace had to do with you getting tickets to the Wiggles....haha!!
Haha! I guess we can learn together. At least I had 1 brother. That is helping me some. Still, I think that with 3 boys and a scoutmaster at our house I'll be fluent in that language eventually! :)
Kristin, I laughed so hard when I read this. As part of my primary calling, I'm over cub scouts and this blog pretty much says everything I have ever thought about it. I've gone to all the trainings (like hours of them... blah) and I'm STILL confused. Why does it have to be so complicated?
Ahhh, the joys of scouts! I too grew up in a family of girls but I never had a dad who was involved in scouts at all so now that I am the mother to a Cub Scout, I am way out in left field when it comes to knowing what is going on. I decided that Noah is my practice round and he can help little Junior with all his scout stuff!
tehehe, i like to say woggle too!!
You know you're going to be the cub scout leader someday, which would be even better if they still had that yellow shirt (does that make sense?)
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